Build Your Own House presents works that become the condensed redefinitions of the space they are in and reflect the romanticized condition of the user’s singularity.
The idea for the group show Build Your Own House derives from the Athenian middle class interiors. Comprising the inner part of the apartment building which was the regnant architectural element in the city’s urban landscape from the 50s until the late 90s, these pods followed an aberrant architecture, based on standardization. Here, the degenerated guidelines of modernism managed to create in most cases an amalgam of specific design and nonarchitecture. Under the pressure of mass production and in absence of time for statements and movements to be followed, the architectural style is replaced by the personal choice. Build Your Own House observes the urgent and bland customization of the pre-defined personal space and notes the singular optimization of the blank canvas that works as the background of the city. The domestic space is the space around the human body, the extension of the subjective reality and the natural limit of the social interaction. It’s the starting point of the relationship in between the public and private sphere. In this sense, the spatial interference tends to redefine this relationship and contextualize the organization of the social forms. Build your own house zooms into the symbolisms that are produced within this social context and explores how the featured works can take over and redefine the space.